Devolo has launched its latest powerline Ethernet product: an 85Mb/s adaptor designed to connect a hi-fi to a mains-hosted network so it can play streamed music.
Devolo dLAN Audio Extender Devolo's dLAN Audio Extender: ready for remote playback
The dLAN Audio Extender looks like a typical powerline adaptor, but in place of …

COMMENTS

Not bad

I'll be interested in this, and the wired set, and the wireless extenders... when the prices drop to something reasonable. In the meantime, I'll be channeling audio and video along ethernet the old fashioned way (I've made one of these, works nicely too):

not sure i'd trust these

Just stereo?

Seems like this would be much nicer if it was optical. Not only would that do all sorts of surround goodies, but there isn't much chance of a rogue current roaming down a plastic/glass fiber. Not much chance at all. And if you don't have a reciever with optical input, then you probably don't need to be wasting this kind of cash on powerline networking to connect up your pc to it.

@ mains voltage going directly into my stereo/pc

Alarmist

So this is mains-powered - well aren't your PCs and pre-amps mains-powered too? There's as much chance of mains getting into the audio connections with these devices as there is with those. Just because it passes information over the mains doesn't make it - or a conventional power-line ethernet adaptor - any more likely to fry your equipment than anything else.

INterference

Mains Interference being the biggest bugbear of audio freaks, i can't see this here product doing all that well for anyone other than the teen market with the MP3's stored on the PC - but where will they send the audio too!?

@Scott Mckenzie: Interference

Audio freaks will believe what they are told by marketers about overpriced sillies to make their music sound better, even when they make no difference at all. I'm sure they'd buy one of these if the prongs were gold plated.

The rest of us are more sensible and some of us even realise that this is a digital system so will be able to cope with reasonable amounts of noise on the mains without it making the slightest difference. If it gets through to your badly-designed amplifier, it will get through via its existing mains cable just as easily as by this device.

And I'm astonished that people still think that this thing is likely to put mains down their audio leads. They obviously have no understanding of electronics at all. Still, fodder for the marketers...